Brushfire of Freedom
The Conservative Cowboy
First step in using this process is to understand what the process entails. Appreciative inquiry is a problem solving technique that can be used by business managers. Without going into too much detail the basics are simply this. Throw your standard problem solving techniques out the window, forget about what the problem is that you want to solve. Instead of focusing on the problem focus on the good things that you, the company, or in the case of this blog the county does to be successful. In other words figure out how to replicate the good things and the problems go away. So how can we apply this to the current situation?
What do Americans as a country do well? Well I will say that we used to produce some of the best cars and trucks in the world. So let’s look at the good things that we did in the auto industry that put us at the forefront, and see if we can get back there. I am going to start with Henry Ford, who in a moment of genius figured out if he could produce a car that his employees could afford that he would be able to sell a lot more cars. If Henry Ford was a liberal thinker he would have increased everyone’s wages to a point where they could afford the expensive cars, not realizing that doing this would actually cause the prices of the car to go up parallel to the wage increases. Well Henry Ford did not employ this thinking; so what did he do? He cut costs and made the same quality car but decreased his variable costs; he had some help in doing this by using the assembly line. Now we can fast forward to when the big three as we tend to call them started to lose their market share to companies like Toyota and Honda. The answer is very simple; the big three let their variable costs rise too much to compete. They lost their competitive edge with rising labor costs and had to cut variable costs the only other place that they could and that was in quality. Now this rise in labor costs in not the only reason that the big three lost their competitive edge against the foreign car manufactures. Higher corporate tax rates also helped the big three lose their competitive edge, but that is a whole other issue (see “the real facts about income taxes” April 16th 2009).
So back to the rising labor costs, and the cause of this dramatic decline of our automakers. The UAW has pushed for wage and benefit increases since its inception in 1935. The UAW will justify this by saying that big corporations take advantage of labor by paying substandard wages and benefits. This may have been true in 1935; however, we have come to a point where enough is enough. What the unions don’t understand is that the workers have a vested interest in the company that they are working for, and that interest is just as important as the stockholders and upper management. It is in the best interest of the worker for the company to be successful. Another fact of business that the UAW doesn’t understand is that motivation for the worker cannot come from guaranteed raises, and incentive payments. Raises and incentive payments should be based on worker productivity. A person will not push themselves to make a better product if they are going to get the raise regardless of the quality of their work. It is also unfair to expect a company to pay for items like healthcare when the worker is no longer actually working for the company. Basically the company is paying for something and they get nothing from that worker in return. How would you feel if you paid for a product or service and did not receive that product or service in return for the money that you paid?
Everyone today is looking for a scapegoat for this current mess that we are in as a country, and they need only look in the mirror. We as Americans have forgotten all of the things that used to make us the best. We have replaced those positive things with items like universal healthcare; government sponsored welfare, and increased taxes. When are we going to put a stop to the madness?
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